Can the web help fight corruption?

Sunday, October 21st, 2007

Lessig turns his keen insight and trademark presentation style towards the analysis of corruption as he steps away from 10 years of focusing on intellectual property issues and their impacts on culture, creativity and innovation. I wish him luck as he will have the full force of the ...

Owning the rainbow: why spectrum can and should be freed

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007

Lessig's presentation on the control of US airwaves is brilliantly clear, as usual:

Going Down the Tubes: The Illegal-ization of Culture

Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007

We've all heard the platitude before: today's culture is going down the tubes. In recent history, major conduits for cultural influence have been "talking machines" (radio) and "boob tubes" (TV). More recently we have the rapid increase in influence of the internet (also composed of "tubes" if you listen to ...

We are the internet – so take back the internet!

Friday, December 22nd, 2006

Bob Frankston hits the "network neutrality" nail squarely on the head in his article "Our Internet!" We are the Internet...We don’t need be given “Internet” by a central authority because the defining principle is that we can and must connect from the edge rather than relying on carrier be it a ...

There is hope for progressive Canadian governance, perhaps even the environment

Monday, December 4th, 2006

Stéphane Dion, former Canadian environment minister, was elected leader of the Liberal Party at a dramatic convention in Montreal. A darkhorse candidate, Mr. Dion does not come off as a typical politician rather he retains much of the style and demeanor of the university professor he once was. For a Liberal ...

Intelligence 2.0

Monday, December 4th, 2006

The NYTimes has an interesting article (login required) about efforts in the US intelligence community to harness the power of "web 2.0" blogs, wikis and social networking in the interest of more efficient collaboration: Something had gone horribly awry, Burton realized. Theoretically, the intelligence world ought to revolve around information sharing. ...

Freeconomics and the copybot: consequences for intellectual property

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Chris Anderson of Long Tail fame "cheekily" coins freeconomics as shorthand for his more recent thesis on "economics of abundance". (I should mention that he does so with apologies to Freakonomics) Anderson points out how technology that was once scarce is fast becoming a cheap enough commodity to be offered ...

Visualize This!

Tuesday, November 28th, 2006

Visualization can be a powerful tool, not only for education but also for exploring information and generating new ideas. Hans Rosling from the impressive Gapminder project gives an excellent presentation exposing how powerful visualization tools combined with public domain data could be important drivers of social change. One of the barriers ...

Do Canadians Value Privacy?

Tuesday, November 7th, 2006

That Canada ranked #2 in defending the privacy of its citizens is perhaps more of a sad comment on international complacence on privacy issues than a major achievement of which we can be particularly proud. From The Globe and Mail: LONDON — Germany and Canada are the best defenders of privacy, ...

Emerging from the Chaos…

Sunday, July 2nd, 2006

Adam over at Emergent Chaos clarifies some Network Neutrality concepts for his readers in his post Innovation, Emerging From Chaos. He points out that "the regulatory apparatus has fairly clearly been captured by the regulated". Basically the big telecom corporations have learned how to thrive on regulation, and this has implications ...